


Sharpe's Confession and Harper's Nightmare

by InkSiren



Series: Sharpe's Fanfic [12]
Category: Sharpe (TV), Sharpe - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Nightmares, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28185645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSiren/pseuds/InkSiren
Summary: Loup almost had him. He should have had him.Missing scene for just after the Sharpe's Battle movie.
Series: Sharpe's Fanfic [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034673
Kudos: 5





	1. Sharpe's Confession

“You were right, Pat.” 

“I know I was. About what?”

Richard snorts, but the attempt at a laugh is as half-hearted as he feels. They’ve lost Perkins, and with him Richard feels that part of his heart has been lost as well. Pat seems to notice his long, weary pause and a moment later a warm cup bumps against his fingers. Richard looks down to see the tea, and gingerly he accepts it between his hands. If only to hold it.

“About my jacket,” he says at last, and then twitches to take a sip. He doesn’t manage. “Loupe had me, Pat. I was on my back, beaten to the last breath and he had his sword point resting right here.” 

He touches between black trim on a green breast and Patrick feels his breath catch. The rifleman’s braid may as well be a ribcage, and Patrick can almost see Richard’s heart still beating fearfully behind it. 

“What stopped him?” Patrick asked, unsticking his mouth and trying to blink back that image. It’s more vivid than he would like, for his imagination has plenty with which to seed itself.

Richard huffs, it’s not quite a laugh, and he shakes his head as he tilts it back and sighs. “The bloody jacket. He had to pull back or else he wouldn’t have been able to get through. Gave me a moment to retaliate and it’s what finished him.”

For a while, silence falls between them, Richard watching the steam waft from his mug and Patrick staring into the fire, swallowing down the tightness in his throat. Any other time he may have teased Richard, just a little, but the escape had been too narrow and their loss is too fresh. 

And he can see it’s shaken him.

“Well,” Patrick says at length. “Then I’m grateful for the old thing. I don’t think I could have stood losing you as well.” 

“Aye,” Richard says softly, and finally takes a long drink of his tea. He closes his eyes as he swallows it, feeling the heat pass through him and warm his chest. He’s keenly aware of the thudding inside, how it warms, how it carries that warmth into fingers that still feel numb from battle. 

He knows he’s lucky.

Even if grief and guilt try to smother it.


	2. Harper's Nightmare

Despite the amount of times that they’ve all faced down death, despite the assurance that Richard is alive and well barely a stone’s throw away, _despite_ the tea Patrick can still smell that he knows Richard eventually drank...what he’d confessed about Loup haunts Patrick and it takes him a long time to get to sleep.

Maybe it’s just that he’s raw and brutalized from Perkins, maybe it’s because they’re all living in a life that no man should have to, but the image of Loup piercing Sharpe with his terrible sword will not leave Patrick’s imagination.

When he does get to sleep, the images grow worse, fueled by the lack of evidence to the contrary.

In Patrick’s nightmares, Richard is dead, and he stumbles down the steps with the dread of a crypt already clinging to them to find his best friend has died alone.

“Richard,” he feels the name slip panicked from him, and he stumbles, catching himself on unforgiving stone as his strength leaves him and he manages the last few steps to the body slumped against the wall.

Sometimes the sword is still pinning him there, wedged into the wall with a superhuman cruelty that stops Patrick from removing it at all. In other, repeated moments Richard could be sleeping awkwardly after a night of good drinking, except for the blood that has turned his rifleman green a terrible black.

Shaking fingers work open silver buttons and Patrick touches the tiny wound, throat tight to the point of pain with the disbelief of it all. Such a little thing on the surface, and yet he knows it has pierced Sharpe’s heart, and without his heart safe the rest of him has fallen.

Gone cold, gone pale, gone far beyond where Patrick can call him back from.

He still finds himself cradling the body, then lifting it, finding his commander no more difficult to carry than Perkins had been.

The blood everywhere makes him sick, soaked into his skin, into his knees, and when Patrick wakes in a cold sweat he can still smell it. Maybe because he's bitten his tongue and the taste is close, or maybe because he's a soldier and there's blood always on the wind.

No matter the reason, he cannot stay put. He needs, absolutely primally _needs_ that image out of his head and so he goes to Richard's tent.

The camp is quiet and Richard is curled on his side, still and silent in his sleep. The image pains Patrick, because he knows normally unless he's with a companion Richard sleeps to protect his back. Now, he's huddled with his arms tucked in over his chest, his head curled down like the threat of a sword has for the moment won out against the phantom whips behind him.

Patrick cannot see him breathe in this bad light, and the jacket hung nearby looks black.

Patrick pulls away, cursing himself and breathing harshly, his own heart pounding.

"You're being a bloody fool, get it together," he tells himself, shaky with adrenaline and sick to his stomach.

He can’t get it together, not this time, and eventually he turns back to the tent, pushing through the flaps and moving to Richard’s side. He’s quiet, but not as quiet as he should be, hoping in some way to wake Richard and prove himself blissfully wrong.

Richard is exhausted from the day, from the sickness of grief curled up in his heart like a black cat, and he doesn’t stir even when Patrick sits on the ground next to his cot.

From here, with the little bit of moonlight falling across Richard’s hunched shoulders, at last Patrick can see him breathe.

Patrick breathes too, slumping forward, his head in his hands and quiet sobs spilling out of him.

Richard doesn’t wake, and Patrick doesn’t leave.


End file.
